Justia U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Petitioner, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in Texas state court, appealed the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner asserted that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to investigate and develop mitigating facts that could have been presented at the punishment stage of trial. The district court determined that petitioner was not entitled to relief on this claim but granted a certificate of appealability. Because the state court did not unreasonably apply clearly established federal law on the record before it, the court affirmed the judgment.

Liberty appealed the summary judgment awarded to its insured, Technical Automation, holding that Liberty had a duty to defend Technical Automation in an underlying lawsuit. The court held that, notwithstanding Stern v. Marshall, the magistrate had jurisdictional authority under Article III to try and enter judgment in the state law counterclaim. The court also held that the magistrate judge erred in not resolving whether a mutual mistake existed as to coverage and whether the policy should be reformed to expunge the disputed provision. Therefore, the court reversed and vacated the summary judgment in favor of Technical Automation and remanded for further proceedings.

In this Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. 1346(b)(1), case arising out of medical malpractice that led to the death of Melissa Busch, the United States and Ms. Busch's family members, plaintiffs, cross-appealed the district court's judgment. The case arose out of repeated medical misdiagnoses that led to the untimely death of Ms. Busch from synovial foot cancer. The court held that the district court did not err in finding the Government fully liable for the damages award because the Government did not present adequate evidence of NE Methodist's liability. The district court also did not err in concluding that Ms. Busch was not comparatively negligent because the evidence showed that Ms. Busch acted as a reasonable prudent person of her same training and experience would have acted in similar circumstances. The court held, however, that the district court did err in its assessment of plaintiffs' claim for household services. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings.

This case involved the Corps' dredging of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a shipping channel between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as levees alongside the channel and around the city. The Corps' negligence in maintaining the channel, grounded on a failure to appreciate certain hydrological risks, caused levees to fail and aggravated the effects of 2005's Hurricane Katrina on the city and its environs. Claimants filed hundreds of lawsuits and this opinion concerned three groups of bellwether plaintiffs, all suing the United States for flood damages. The district court found that neither the Flood Control Act of 1928 (FCA), 33 U.S.C. 702, nor the discretionary-function exception (DFE) to the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. 2680(a), protected the government from suit; the district court found that three plaintiffs had proven the government's full liability and four had not. Another group of plaintiffs (Anderson plaintiffs) had their cases dismissed on the government's motion, the district court finding both immunities applicable. A different group (Armstrong plaintiffs) were preparing for trial of their own case against the government. The government appealed its losses in Robinson; the losing Robinson plaintiffs cross-appealed. The Anderson plaintiffs also appealed. On the theory that a favorable ruling might moot the pending Armstrong trial, the government petitioned the court for a writ of mandamus to order the district court to stay trial until the court issued an opinion in Robinson and Anderson. The three cases have been consolidated on appeal. The court held that the district court's careful attention to the law and even more cautious scrutiny of complex facts allowed the court to uphold its ruling in full, excepting the court's minor restatement of FCA immunity. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgments in Robinson and Anderson, denying the government's petition for writ of mandamus to stay the Armstrong trial.

Plaintiff sued his employer and one of its owners, defendant, for violating the minimum wage standards under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. 206(a). Plaintiff argued that as a member of this Texas limited liability corporation, defendant was an "employer" under the FLSA and was therefore personally liable for the employer's violations. The district court granted summary judgment to defendant. Applying the economic reality test to defendant, the court reaffirmed the district court's conclusion that no reasonable jury could have found him to be an employer where defendant was simply not sufficiently involved in the operation of the club. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence on count 26 of a superseding indictment, which charged him with possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. On appeal, defendant contended that his guilty plea to count 26 was not made knowingly and voluntarily because he was not properly admonished regarding the direct consequences of his plea. The court found that if defendant knew before his plea hearing that the district court would interpret his plea to count 26 as an admission of guilt to the machine gun offense, it "would have been likely to affect his willingness to plead guilty." Accordingly, the court vacated defendant's guilty plea as to that count and remanded to the district court to allow him to plead anew.